Long bull market in Fed faith faces taper: James Saft

Aug 15 (Reuters) – For the first time in more than three
decades we may be entering a period of declining faith in the
Federal Reserve.

If the Fed does begin to taper in coming months, slowing its
bond purchases as many expect, it will mark a tacit
acknowledgment of the limits of the power of monetary policy. By
extension, it would also mark a decrease in the power or
willingness of the Fed to control the prices of financial
assets.

This realization – that the Fed can’t always play Santa
Claus and FOMC day isn’t a sort of secular Christmas – will hit
investors hard.

On the evidence, this realization is already dawning.

Gold jumped by 2.37 percent on Thursday, while the
dollar fell and government bond interest rates continued
to march higher. Ten-year Treasury yields touched
2.76 percent for the first time since July of 2011. At the same
time the S&P 500 index fell by 1.4 percent.

Conventional wisdom on Thursday was that bond yields were
rising and stocks falling because new economic data made a
September taper more likely. Jobless claims last week did fall
to close to a six-year low, while consumer prices rose by a
small but meaningful amount in July. That’s significant,
especially the inflation, as the low and falling inflation we’ve
had seemed to call for more stimulus rather than less.

“Are we at the low water mark for inflation? Maybe, and if
the Fed even suspects this is the case, they will be even more
eager to end asset purchases and normalize policy,” Tim Duy, an
economist at the University of Oregon and noted Fed watcher
wrote in his blog. (here)

“Bottom Line: The realization continues to grow that whether
it is September or October or December, the end of asset
purchases is now in sight.”

Now if the Fed tapers because it has succeeded, then the
logic holds that a taper is bad for financial assets but the
central bank retains its ability to use policy to drive prices
in the direction it wishes to affect the economy. That is a
bedrock belief for many investors, allowing them to sleep well
at night secure in the notion, however false, that the financial
universe is run by a benevolent power which tends to err on the
side of asset owners.

A NEW WORLD

You can hardly blame them for believing that, indeed the
last 30 years have conditioned investors so that they do.

Things, however, are a bit more complicated. While retail
sales in aggregate have been fine, if not compelling, recent
earnings from Wal-Mart and Macy’s appear to point
to a U.S. consumer taking the month of July off. At the same
time, industrial production is going sideways, and the
Philadelphia Fed index of general business activity in the
mid-Atlantic region more than halved in August from July, to
just a 9.3 reading. New orders halved and shipments actually
contracted.

All of this points to a Fed which is thinking longingly
about taper despite a signal lack of success of its
extraordinary monetary policy. And while the central bank
stresses that a tapering isn’t a tightening, higher interest
rates make that harder and harder to swallow.

Remember, a tapering may occasion the first significant
market reversal in many years brought on by the Fed wittingly,
as opposed to by accident. Not that the Fed wants markets to go
down, but rather that it may finally feel that the risks and
costs of a pro-financial asset policy outweigh the benefits.

This would be something entirely outside the experience of
most working investors and analysts. It will come, if it does,
as a big shock.

Think of the past decades – the Long-term Capital Management
bailout, the dotcom bubble, the aftermath of the dotcom bubble,
the housing bubble and finally, the “rescue” of the economy in
the wake of the financial crisis. All of these included as a
central feature Fed policy which tended to indulge market runs
and attempted to soften market falls.

None of this is to say that the Fed’s ability or commitment
to fight inflation is in doubt, only the widespread faith in it
as an institution which can somehow magic into being excellent
returns for investors, while standing by to clean up their
messes.

This change in market psychology will be, on the whole, a
good thing.

It will, however, tend to push downward swings in risk
assets a bit harder. This leads to the next question: if the Fed
tapers and the market swings down violently, will it return to
form and seek to cushion once again?

If so, the Fed may find its credit with investors all tapped
out.
(At the time of publication, Reuters columnist James Saft did
not own any direct investments in securities mentioned in this
article. He may be an owner indirectly as an investor in a fund.
For previous columns by James Saft, click on )